Author's note: Readers! You made it to chapter 11! I'm truly honored that you'd go on this adventure with me. I'm going to try my best to get chapters out every few days. The goal is to get this story finished by the end of the month. There. I said it. Now you good citizens can hold me accountable for my words.

If any of you have a minute to drop me a few sentences, I'd like to know from my unbiased parties: How am I doing on the pacing? Is the curiosity starting to build, yet? Favorite/least/favorite characters?

What would you like to see more of? As the story takes shape, now's the time for requests.

As always, I'm a sucker for reviews! Can't wait to get to know you, dear readers.

Chapter 11 Joe

"You son of a half-finned, lop-gilled trout!" Ariel shrieked, trying her best to swim away from him, and though her efforts weren't much more than an inconvenience to him, he was somewhat relieved when she seemed to be running out of energy.

"I'm cecalean," he said dryly.

"That's worse!"

"I know," he said, his voice sounding bland, even to himself.

Two hours, and Ariel hadn't run out of insults to throw at him. It was actually rather impressive to Joe. Not twenty four hours before, he wouldn't have thought her capable of the things she'd been saying—not that he was paying her much attention anymore.

After the sunrise, she'd been confused. Then she'd been love-lorn. Then, she'd been mopey; then charming, and at last she was angry—oh, so angry. It would have been highly entertaining had his ears not been quite so sensitive.

Dragging her by the tail with one tentacle, his other seven propelled them forward toward the end of the current as Ariel tried with admirable effort to get free of the sucking pull of the magically enhanced undertow. Joe had followed the magical thread of the currents outside the Atlantean border—and thus, outside of Triton's control—to the entrance of the magically-created current at the edge of the dropoff. It was lucky for Adin that they'd been where they'd been when he'd decided to interfere. Joe didn't have the time for a drawn-out fight, and he would have hated to actually harm Adin—even if he was acting like a complete loach.

After what felt like an eternity, the current at last spat them out onto a barren sandy bank at the bottom of the dropoff. It wasn't as deep as the Depths would be, and certainly wasn't as dark. Very faint sunlight still streamed from overhead, and if Joe had to guess, he would say they weren't more than one or two leagues down—although his eyes were likely to pick up more than a regular merman. Joe squinted in every direction, finding nothing much in the way of interest. Every few feet or so, scattered dead seaweed lay lifeless in the still sand, and there was the occasional pebble, but there were no other signs of life as far as his eyes could see.

"You horrible tentacled minnow!"

"Yes, Princess," he said absentmindedly, searching the ground before them, and carrying Ariel in the direction the current had spat them. It wasn't long before his efforts were rewarded.

"Castrated over-baked catfish!" she continued.

"Language, princess," he chided distantly. "We have company."

Joe spotted Adin near the base of a statue looming out of the ground a few dozen feet from the exit of the current's tunnel. The statue itself wasn't hard to spot, though it loomed in the dark waters ahead. It was dim enough that he was surprised Ariel could see, until he remembered that his ink would have adjusted more than just her blood and her breathing—and Adin was clearly in need of the same.

He clung to the statue for dear life, eyes darting in every direction. The poor guppy probably thought he'd gone blind.

"Here," Joe said quietly, as they approached the statue and Adin.

Adin, still gripping his spear for dear life, flinched back at the sound of Joe's voice, and Joe fought an aggravated sigh as he summoned enough ink to blow into Adin's gills. Likely, Adin wouldn't appreciate what he'd done, but he also wouldn't be able to get out of here on his own without it.

Ejecting enough ink to darken the water around Adin's face to a true black, Joe leaned back and watched the young merman cough and splutter until at last, his eyes refocused, and his breathing grew less labored.

"Better?" he asked.

Adin shuddered, and nodded.

"Convinced I'm not trying to hurt you?" he asked again.

It seemed that though his vision had returned, Adin still had to squint to see Joe and Ariel right in front of him.

No, Joe realized. That was just Adin narrowing his eyes in suspicion.

"Sort of," Adin said, though he still gripped his spear in terror.

"Adin?" Ariel gasped, changing direction as she struggled in Joe's tentacles. "Adin is that you? You're a guard! What are you doing? Get me away from him! Can't you see he's trying to keep me from my fiance?"

"I am, indeed," Joe intuned.

Adin looked between Joe and Ariel. "Um, Ariel…"

Joe watched confusion play across Adin's face. He was clearly still shaken from the twisting, writhing waters of the current that had brought them down here, but though he was less aggressive, he wasn't exactly friendly, either.

"Well?" Ariel snapped again. "Don't just sit there, Adin! Distract him! Fight him! Get me back to the surface!"

Joe hadn't heard Ariel use this tone since she was much younger, and had tried to confront a group of bullies on her own—they'd backed off of course, once they'd learned who she was, but that didn't stop them from laughing and jeering all the while.

"Not like her to order you around like this, is it?" Joe said dryly, watching Adin's mouth drop open. It seemed he'd lost his helmet to the current, and his surprise was on full display as Ariel's agitation grew worse.

"He's my guard! I'll order him around if I like!" she snapped. "Unlike you, Joe! Have you forgotten who I am?"

"I'm…at your service, princess," said Adin obediently, but with a surge of victory, it was obvious that Adin at least knew something was wrong.

Joe supposed he could understand Adin's plight. Adin was two years younger than Ariel, and seven younger than himself. At Adin's age, and with his experiences that had been so limited within the palace walls, he might have reacted similarly. Still, Adin really was blind if he couldn't see that this wasn't the sweet Ariel they were both used to—although, it wasn't completely unlike her. The potion could skew emotions, only. That meant that this palace brat had been lurking inside Ariel somewhere in her self-doubts or consciousness longer than today. It was something they'd address later, if Ariel could even remember the day's events come nightfall.

Slowly, Joe sat down next to Adin, keeping his hold on the struggling Ariel. Adin tensed at Joe's proximity, and he found himself raising an imperious brow down at him. Even up at the dropoff, Joe had never hurt Adin, and the guppy didn't have any reason to believe he would other that what other guards had told him.

"If you're not convinced I don't want to hurt you, I'm sure you can at least believe that something's been tampering with her head. Believe me, I wouldn't have been able to do anything to her while we were in that current," Joe said quietly.

"There's nothing wrong with me! I'm just tired! Take. Me. Home!" Ariel insisted again, waggling a weak finger at Adin's nose.

Joe ignored her, wondering just how badly the potion was affecting her if she thought the trembling young guard before her could do anything about her situation in these dark waters. It wasn't just ridiculous, it was completely unfair to Adin, who, considering his worship of the royal positions, probably thought he actually could do something. Joe felt a familiar vein throb in his temple in annoyance.

"I'm going to find her a cure." Against his better instincts, Joe kept his voice gentle, willing Adin to understand him. "In three days, whether or not this is fixed, I will return you and Ariel to the surface waters safely. You have my word. However; it will be fixed," he said fiercely. "Then, whether Ariel wants to marry the eel, it will at least be her choice."

"Sorry, Joe, but I still don't believe you. Why does something tell me you had something to do with this?" Adin might have been trembling, but he apparently still had the presence of thought to think scowling at Joe was a good idea.

Joe bared his teeth at Adin. His temple pulsing with every word, he ground the rock under one tentacle out of Adin's sight, fighting for patience.

"You'll do it anyway, because you need me alive and willing to give you ink if you want to survive the way out of the trenches—like it or not, and Adin," Joe warned. "If you couldn't touch me with that little stick, what on earth makes you think you can fend off the things that live down here?"

That at least had an effect. Adin paled, and though he didn't let it go, he shot a panicked glance between his spear and Joe's much more muscled chest than his own. Joe could see the gears turning in his head, and was glad that the spinning currents evidently hadn't robbed Adin of all sense.

"Are you even listening to me, Adin? I didn't want to report you to the chief, and I won't, but only if you get me out of here—" Ariel started again.

One of Joe's tentacles shot out an wrapped itself around Ariel's mouth. He winced when she bit him, but her little teeth couldn't do much damage, and it hurt less than listening to her protests another minute.

"That's enough of that, Princess," Joe growled. "Adin?"

Adin rose shakily from his seat on the dark sand, and steadied himself on the statue. "Looks like I have to go with you," he said at last. "Princess Ariel, I can't get you out of here alone, but I promise to escort and chaperone you both until we're safely back to Atlantis."

Adin punctuated his pledge with a fist across his heart in salute.

"Many thanks," said Joe, resisting an eyeroll. "Now that we're all on the same lovely quest, let's figure out where we're going, shall we?"

As Adin and Ariel both gave him blessed—albeit forced—silence, Joe left his seat at the base of the monolith, and rose to examine the structure.

Towering with an eerie presence, Joe had to swim back several feet to see the whole of it.

A shiver went down his spine as the statue took the form of a colossal, twisted tentacle, frozen as if reaching out from the abyss. At its peak, it was tall enough to reach the waters where the sunlight just struggled to reach, somehow pulling just enough light down across its surface to illuminate its dark form. Carved with meticulous and almost lifelike detail, the stone tentacle's surface was weathered and marred by colonies of barnacles and gnathlids that might have taken centuries to build up.

Nothing Ursula had told him hinted at anything like this, and though he knew there was a possibility his information had holes, he'd trusted in his ability to follow the magical lines like those that had pointed him to the first current. This statue was ominous and cold, so devoid of life aside from the colonies that dotted its surface, that Joe was thoroughly flummoxed.

Knowing that giving up simply wasn't an option, he swam a lap, then two, then three around the wide circumference of the tentacle, searching for some sort of clue. It wasn't until Ariel, evidently annoyed by his lack of perception, poked at him silently, and pointed with a very unladylike eyeroll to the side of the statue, where odd shapes were sticking out from beneath a particularly thick colony of barnacles.

He shot her a questioning look, to which she only responded with a huff and folded arms. Although she refused to look at him, she at least seemed motivated enough to move on from this eerie place to be helpful.

With considerable effort, Joe scraped off a thicker chunk of the barnacles to reveal a carved set of letters that had been hacked into the stone on one side. At last, the faintest patch of blue light glowed from within the deepset lettering, and Joe knew they'd found their clue. What he didn't know, was how Ariel had been able to see it before him, but he supposed it wasn't the first time she'd seen things a little different.

Each word awakened with a faint glow as he read them aloud:

Alle ye who seek saftye, follow my hands, eight.

I pointe for those who new lives make.

In shadows cast by moonlit skies,

Beware deceit in friendly eyes.

In depths below, I lie unseen,

Where siecrets of oceans convene.

Start your path, my arm to mark,

Leave me, and embrace the dark.

"What in the trenches does that mean?" Joe hissed aloud. "Ursula said any cecaelia could find the Depths. This should be magical—intuitive! It's anything but!"

"It sounds like it's trying to get us to just…swim into the dark," Adin said nervously from below. He hadn't yet left his perch at the base of the statue. "Maybe another one of the currents will pick us up if we just swim into the blackest part?"

"I think that sounds like a great way to die," Joe growled. "Currents like that don't just take you. You have to enter them on purpose."

"I didn't enter it on purpose!" Adin pointed out.

"Oh, there was purpose," Joe growled under his breath.

He ran a frustrated hand through his hair, and almost didn't notice the exasperated bubbles snorting from Ariel's nose.

"I suppose you have something to say, Princess?" he asked.

Under his tentacle, she nodded.

"Well, that's tough. You've said enough for a week, I think," he grumped, and turned away, setting back to his pacing. Even if it wasn't intuitive, he should be able to figure this out with enough time, and Ariel's insults while not harmful, weren't going to help him focus on the matter at hand.

"Let's see…" he muttered. "There's a warning in that first part, but that's pretty much a given down here. It doesn't seem to give any directions until the last part, but none of them actually make sense."

Ariel poked him in the side, and he swatted her away.

"Unseen, where oceans convene," he said. "Some kind of oceanic border? But we're hundreds of miles away from the nearest one…that can't be the entrance. It has to be closer than that—"

She poked him again.

"I'd think the tentacle would just point the way to the next one, but it's pointing straight up, back where we just came from!" By now, Joe's hair was a mess. At this rate, he was going to fail the first test, and they wouldn't even make it an eighth of the way there. Ursula had never mentioned anything like this, which meant she'd never been down here before, and if that was the case…he didn't know anyone who could help them.

Ariel's poking was getting more insistent.

"What, princess?" Joe finally snapped at her. Before she could make a permanent indent in his ribcage, he caught her hand, and gave her his full attention.

Ariel was pointing from the last verse of the rhymes to the base of the statue, then to the left, and back again. Joe squinted at her.

"I'm not sitting here until your guards come looking. You do realize that unless your father personally visited this trench with the trident, he wouldn't be able to sense you down here?"

Ariel only rolled her eyes at him and pointed to the tentacle over her mouth.

"I think not," he said wryly. "As much as I enjoy your sweet words, I'm afraid I still have a headache from the last batch."

She glared, and resumed her pointing.

At last, he sighed. "What, you think you could do better?"

She matched his glare, and for the first time since the sunrise, she looked like herself—but not enough for Joe to want to uncover her mouth.

"Where oceans collide…" Joe muttered, and immediately, Ariel pointed straight down. "You think it's a direction? We can't swim into the silt."

She pointed down again.

"South?" he guessed, and she nodded. "South, as in where the oceans convene…the abyss. Well, now we're getting somewhere, I suppose that make sense. And the rest?"

She pointed left.

"West," he said flatly. "Why west?"

She indicated the faint sunlight above, and pointed left again. It took him longer to understand her motions this time. He gave some serious consideration to ungagging Ariel, but the thought of having to re-gag her, and the potential that this was one of her many more charming ploys to get what she wanted from him did occur. "West as in….away from the sun? That would be toward the darkness," he mused, but nothing happened.

"Not a bad guess, but that's not it, Ariel."

At that, she jabbed him again in the ribs, hard, and pointed in the directions again.

"Ach! You know your pointer finger could do more damage than your guard's spears," he complained, swatting at her hand, which grabbed his, and traced the directions again.

"South…west," he said, following her finger. "South-west."

At his words, there was a horrible grinding sound, and with a great shudder, the stone tentacle began to move.

Joe flinched back, pulling Ariel with him before the twisted shape of the statue could nick her tail. He didn't hear Adin's cries of alarm until the stone stopped moving.

"What was that?" he was shrieking. "It moved! The whole statue moved!"

And, moved it had. The tip of the tentacle had gyrated on a mechanical anchor to bend, pointing at what Joe could only assume from his distorted memory of direction was south-west. A single blue line traced its way through the darkness from its tip, marking the way.

"I suppose you always were good with words, princess," Joe said appreciatively, tracing the blue light with his gaze. "You can see that?"

She nodded, and made another attempt at pushing off the tentacle over her mouth.

He gave her a wry smile. "Not until sundown, if you please, Princess."

From the look on her face, Ariel very much did not please, but he wasn't ready to give her that choice until she was thinking clearly again. Adin seemed to have recovered from his shock, and darted up from his perch at the base of the tentacle to meet them.

"How did that happen? The statue moved, did you see it?" Adin asked, gasping.

"It was hard to miss," said Joe. "We should get going. The instructions said there are seven more of these, and I can't imagine they're going to get any easier."

"Instructions?" Adin was the picture of shock and confusion, and for once, he didn't argue with him. Joe could live with that.

"Follow me," Joe instructed. "I doubt you can see the beacon."

"Beacon?" Adin flustered.

"Hm."

Joe led the way forward along the trail of light a dozen feet, and then a hundred. Moving forward in the blackening water, they were just out of sight of the statue when Joe saw it—the end of the beacon was marked by a single, shining bead, and grabbing the pesky mer-guard by the tail the way he had done with Ariel, he grabbed it.

In a much more violent pull than the last current, they were sucked in.